Ski-DOOSH!

The weekend was really all that summer weekends can be: BBQ, matinee cinema, milkshakes, and just at the very last moment - sunshine!

Friday night we went into the city - a rare enough occurance any night let alone a Friday! - to enjoy some music and socialising at a friend's birthday. It rained, naturally enough! But the appearance of two friends who had disappeared into London this past year more than made up for it. Then Saturday we went to a BBQ - the rain held off - for more socialising (of the less raucous kind). I brough Pimm's and lemonade - instant BBQ success. We spent Sunday hungover... But dragged ourselves into the city to a matinee at the cinema - Kung Fu Panda: perfect rainy Sunday film-fodder. It was sticky sweet and cuddly but funny enough to keep us awake and entertained for the duration. I mean, A) panda (it is impossible to feel anything but gooey watching a panda - even a cartoon one) B) kung fu movie with feel-good message about knowing yourself etc etc etc C) PANDA! Then we came home and watched the penultimate Doctor Who ... no spoilers here - I have no idea what is going on. Though there is much speculation (and spoilers if you are sensitive to that kind of thing).

Then we woke up and decided to put everything we own in boxes. At least the hangover is gone! And tomorrow is Canada Day/Moving Day. And we have a shiny new flat. Bring on July - in which our heroic couple begin a new dawn in the magical land of 'Two Bedroomed Flat'...

That reminds me: I saw on telly the other night a new series of programs (I think it was for UK History channel?) called 'Real Heroes'. Which made me ponder. 'Real' heroes? Of course, everyone is a hero - I should apply for special status and funding for making it to work every afternoon in spite of an overwhelming natural inclination to sleep/find a beer garden/go to my allotment/take up possibly lucrative hobby (if only I had the time...!). I'm struggling against my nature here! This is the stuff of legend. I can spin it. So what, I ask, is a 'real' hero? Having done the standard opening volley into research (aka: google) I can safely say that in this case we are meant to be 'shocked' by the revelation that the 'real heroes' (in this case of WW2) aren't, in fact, the people we (apparently) think: nope, just yer average joe, unsung, unsought, unremarked. Given the fact that 'hero' is the watchword of post-9/11 media, I wonder if we would recognize Superman himself if he sprung from the pages of DC comics, in all his sincere, shiny, unreflective glory. Clark Kent - now he has a shot. But then, Superman is, well, super - kinda impaled by nominal determinism - by definition, he has to be heroic. So what to do with 'Real Heroes'?

It's a bit of a tired term is all. But it strikes me as odd, the use of that term everywhere - particularly because once applied, it becomes an act of agression to try to remove it. It sticks. Woe betide the cynic who dares suggest that someone isn't a hero - but by now, why bother - aren't we all heroes? Don't we all get to be special? Isn't everyone an individual, just like me?

5 is the number

Nasser and I have been married for five years today. In that time, we've moved across the ocean, started and finished our PhDs, lived in two different houses in one city, traveled, started growing our own veg, taken in two cats, found an amazing circle of people whom we count as friends and family - and kept every single one of our vows...oh, except the one about coffee cause now we drink tea!

My grandparents have been married 62 years this October. That makes our little time together lost in a vast sea of experience and living. My parents got married in 1972 - which means when they had me, they had been married for five years too.

At least once every 3/4 months someone asks me how I knew Nasser was 'the one'. Truth is, I didn't; I'm still not sure that I believe in 'one' person for everyone - cosmic pairs, yin-yang and all that rubbish. We both took a leap. The same leap someone takes in moving in with someone, in making that first gesture - a smile, a phone call, the first bridge across a chasm of pretended indifference. There are so many places to fall down and I am so lucky to have found Nasser - not 'someone like Nasser' - actually Nasser.

Five years - and I would live every moment again just to end here, in front of a screen 5,000 miles from where we started, Nasser snoozing on the sofa behind me, our small cat curled on the bookshelf; a moment and space of certainty.

Body, soul, and honest lies

Spent the weekend in our allotment - a reanimating and refreshing break for body and soul. Thanks to a combined effort - and the unflagging enthusiam and energy of one of our 'plot-mates' - our allotment is absolutely restorative; we should sell tickets - an afternoon of guaranteed relaxing, with the added bonus of nibbles straight from the plant. Very young broad bean leaves, still curled into bunches at the tops of the plants, are delicious. Nasturtium leaves taste of very very peppery rocket; pea shoots are wonderfully pea-like (possibly unsurprisingly!). Our salad bed doth overflow and, with a can of lager from the (very) nearby off-licence ... it's a little bit of heaven in Leeds.

Apparently, plagiarism isn't just a problem for university lecturers though I'm not sure that this case helps or hinders the effort to deter the practice. It amuses me that he falls back on the same excuse I've heard in the past - yes, it is plagiarism, but his actions weren't dishonest. Huh? Splitting hairs, methinks. It's always disappointing to see this kind of prevarication in established academics - let alone in my students.

Justice and generosity

Steve (formerly Marx) didn't make it. While I'm sad because he died, I know that he was a hurtin' little beastie and the vet likely did a kindness in putting him down. It's not fair - it's not fair that things have to hurt and suffer and I know I sound like 6-year-old but it is not fair and I won't have it. I get it - I know that life is tough all over and what is one cat in the balance of the universe - which never actually seemed a very fair argument to me as it just assumes (once again) a human-shaped universe - maybe one cat is precious - maybe one bunny or frog or spider or flea or protazoa. Life is unique and so we clap ourselves on the backs and say well aren't we even more special - aren't we worth that much more cause, well - I'll be - just look at me looking at myself! We've got consciousness and what that gives us first and foremost is the ability to look round and decide that we're the most important things here. All this potential to understand things; to demonstrate grace; to change things - which we do every bloody moment - and look what these people chose to do with it.

But I'm also happy - or satisfied - that Marx at least was happy and safe and even liked a little for a few weeks before he died. Not everything - or everyone - will get that; but that doesn't take away from the rightness and goodness when it does happen.

We'll be letting Marx's ignorant, stupid and lazy owners know what happened to him. It will mean nothing to them - but then, I don't care - the world is too small for them and they will stand on the wayside and we will move forward.

E-minder

Netto's doesn't take credit. Netto's doesn't take credit. Netto's doesn't take credit.

I've made this mistake at least once per year - and I just did it again today. And I didn't have my debit card with me. And I'd done a lovely nice shop and was quite looking forward to a cheese and Marmite sandwich for lunch. And the charming lady (whose response to my ever-so-polite 'I'll just put that on credit, please' was 'debit'. Which lead to the following conversation:

me: 'No - credit card, please'
her: 'debit'
me: 'No, this a credit card.'
her: 'debit'

Honestly, she sounded like a frog. A lesson in the use of complete sentences I think. How quickly might I have understood our problem if she had said - the first time - Netto's doesn't take credit, luv)

had already rung through my entire purchase. Cue the frustrated/embarrassed walk out of the store.

Summer and Sunshine ... and then a bit of a rant

At last! the weather has turned glorious sunshine all around - a mediocre Saturday turned into the kind of Sunday that belongs firmly in nostalgic reflections of childhood summers. I spent it at the garden, listening to the French Open on a portable radio, planting tomatoes, chatting to neighbours, and generally revelling in the goodness of outside.

I'm now inside, alas, while the sun continues to shine on outside. But it shows no sign of disappearing so I'm content to be here ... kinda ...

Marx - whose name is now Steve - is getting on and hopefully, getting better ... but very very slowly. He's less yellow - and you must understand when our wonderful neighbours took him in his skin was the colour of a Crayola yellow crayon - if still very slow and a bit confused. I backed myself into a corner - or, got backed into a corner - at a dinner last week defending, slightly drunkenly, my position on my own superiority over people that would evince that kind of cruelty to anyone or anything. The response was that my categories were too easily expanded without cause - or with only subjective cause - people who mistreat animals? the questioning went - what next? The problem is reducing any idea to a policy to be applied broadly and without familiarity. I do wonder what on earth I might have in common with these people that might make me comfortable sharing anything with them - particularly representation. How can one person, one system, represent all these individuals? All these standards of living and being? I still believe what I wrote in the previous post: I am better than someone who could/would starve and neglect to the point of death any creature dependent on them. How do we judge people if not by their actions? What reason might they offer to excuse such behaviour? That they didn't think - how can that be an excuse?

I am better than that. I am expected to be better than that. I'm not talking about moral absolutes. In this case, there was no reason for that kind of cruel neglect - nothing but unwillingness to take responsibility for a creature's life. I would apply that regardless of who it was enacting the cruelty. I suppose in some way cruelty might be a rather subjective term - 'meat is murder' is one of the most inane arguments I've come across but I'm willing to allow that most commercially mass-produced meat likely is unjustifiably cruel. But surely at some level cruelty is cruelty - when it is unnecessary, wasteful, unthinking; there are few arguments I would countenance as a justification for it. I don't deny that life is cruel, but we need not be. And particularly, as here, when it is just crude thoughtlessness, neglect - there is nothing so awful as ignorance, nothing so profoundly disgusting as cruelty born of ignorance without any excuse. These people cannot claim that they did not know; knowing, then, the only conclusion is that they did not care. And that is simply not acceptable.

Did I forget that the sun is shining? Nope. Just wanted to get that out. The sun shines on; my garden will provide dinner tonight!

An Open Letter of Thanks

I name all the cats on the streets where I live - I have since living in Kingston during my undergrad. Here, we have LaFonda and The Black Cat (TBC) and lovely, lonely little Marx. He got his name cause he has a funny black patch on his head that looks like a Groucho Marx wig and a little black spot on his nose - a moustache. Anyway, I've never been fond of Marx's people - Yes, I do judge people by how they treat animals - I also judge people who are irrationally scared of animals and really, if you 'don't like' animals, we're likely not friends. Nor do I likely have a high opinion of you. Back on track - Marx pretty much lived outside. He's just a young cat but lately I noticed that he just sat, rather sadly, on the steps outside his people's house - through sun and rain, wind and, well, more wind. The other day I went past on the other side of the road and he cried out at seeing me - so I walked over to give him a pat. He was skin and bone; his skin was yellow and he was weak. The door opened and some tarted up, bleach-blond, trakkie bottom wearing bint stands there staring. 'Is this your cat?' I ask. 'Yeh. But ee's been sick inside so I threw him out.' 'Oh...um...' - door shuts. Ever the cool one in these situations, I go back home and have a cry. Nas has better plans. He goes down to our neighbourhood friend who lives across from The Assholes. She's been feeding Marx for awhile and had thought he'd been looking worse but wasn't sure. Confirmed in her view by our reports, she acts.

So this is a letter to thank her. She called PDSA and got Marx an appointment; when the first vet said he had liver failure and would have to be put down, she got a second opinion. She had him tested for FIV and feline leukemia and has him at home, grateful for a little warmth and a diet of chicken and fish to get him back up to scratch. He was always a friendly little thing.

See the world needs more people who act - something I've got to do. And I'm also going to focus on her actions because focusing on The Assholes and what they suggest about the whole democratic system makes me see red. But I learned through her about PDSA so next time I'll know what to do.

Apparently The Assholes came over to her house to see 'if they were angry' - our friend and her partner had actually asked them if they could take Marx away. They had 'never really liked cats' and said their little boy used to just pull Marx's tail and hit him. They had apparently never stopped him from doing this. The lesson they had chosen to teach their children, apparently, was that responsibility can be given up - I've raged about this before - and I said I wasn't going to get angry anymore. They are not worth my time or my energy. They are less than nothing. They aren't my peers or my neighbours - I am, in fact, better than them in every possible way. Perhaps, when they get tired of their children (screaming fat brats from what I can see), they'll also end up outside.

But let me end and calm myself by remembering that, at least in this case, all it takes is someone with sense and compassion. Marx is safely in a home, purring on a radiator, enjoying chicken and fish. Thank you neighbour!